Google CEO Schmidt Leaves Apple Board

Jerod Venema writes "Today, Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt resigned from Apple's board of directors, citing conflicts of interest. Apple has released a statement that the company and Schmidt reached a decision to split ties as Google enters new markets that directly compete with Apple's iPhone and Mac operating systems. Schmidt had recused himself of portions of Apple's board meetings when conflicts of interest or anything Google-related arose. But Steve Jobs said Schmidt would have to leave much larger portions of the meetings after Google announced last month that it would enter the operating system sphere."

Comments

Google Voice Rejected

[Blahgerton]

Surely this has nothing to do with Google Voice being rejected from the App Store.

Re:First thing on my mind

[pha7boy]

I thought Microsoft had a big stake in Apple (which would assume that someone from MS would be on Apple's board). maybe i'm wrong.

Re:only mp3 players left

[nxtw]

How can you compare xserver(a sold product) to googles server farms that are completely in house

Using hosted Google services is an alternative to running similar applications on a local server. For example, there's no need to have a local email/calendaring server if you use Gmail and Google Calendar. In this example, it's really OS X Server that could be conflicting with Google's services.

But the more relevant conflict is between Apple's MobileMe and Google's collection of (free) web apps.

Re:only mp3 players left

[MasterMnd]

probably the only thing he didn't have to recuse himself from would be mp3 players....

Hmm, so does this mean that Google's about to announce a line of mp3 players? :)

May be good news for Android

[Zebedeu]

I'm happy for these news because rumours have it that Google didn't implement some features such as multitouch in Android at Apple's request.

Now that they aren't buddy-buddy anymore, maybe Google will say fuck it and implement those features anyway (much as Palm did with the Pré).

Looking forward to that multitouch, and hopefully for those spring animations when a list reaches the end (in Android there isn't any visual feedback when you reach the end of a list except for the mini scrollbar on the right).

Re:Or perhaps?

[je ne sais quoi]

Just to emphasize here, according to the NYT, last month, in the middle of the worst recession in decades:

Apple recorded its best nonholiday quarter ever when other electronics makers were hurting because of a downturn in consumer spending.

They saw increasing revenue and profit in every single division of the company. Compare this to Microsoft, who last quarter saw:

On Thursday, the world's largest software company reported its worst fiscal year since it initially sold stock to the public in 1986. Year-over-year revenue and full-year sales of Microsoft's flagship Windows software dropped for the first time.

Microsoft saw billion dollar reductions in revenue in both the windows (Client) and office (Business) divisions, and it's xbox (entertainment) and search (on-line) divisions were actually in the red and are losing the company money.

Apple is not a "ship going down", this statement is demonstrably false, people are even calling it recession proof. You could say that about Microsoft however and not be contradicted by facts.

This is all about Andriod

[indymike]

This is all about Android, which is poised to knock off the iPhone this fall as over 18 new devices hit the market (from Motorola, Samsung, LG and HTC). Android is the game changer, and both Google and Apple know it.